


Sometimes It Really Is That Easy

by Hawkbringer



Series: Single Stone, Many Birds [2]
Category: Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (Video Game)
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Brief mention of daddy kink, Cancer, Depressing Hospital Talk, Doloran Volunteers, Future Fic, Gen, Healing Magic, M/M, Medical Examination, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Roland Returns, Rough Draft, Temporary Character Death, all around gloomy mood, attempt at writing a Welsh Accent for Lofty, because i headcanon him as super-reckless, brief mention of death, but that was off-screen - he's okay now, for now, i left my notes in, magical medical procedures, unbeta-d
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23506465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Roland Returns, some years later, but not in a state anyone would have wanted. He is gravely ill, and it is only with the help of his magically-powerful-but-still-grieving Other, Doloran, that he recovers as well as he does, that he is able to STAY in Evermore this time, like he always wanted to before... But no gift comes without a price, in any world - to everyone's astonishment, Doloran is willing to pay it himself. (post-game AU)
Relationships: Roland Crane & Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum
Series: Single Stone, Many Birds [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691350
Kudos: 7





	Sometimes It Really Is That Easy

**Author's Note:**

> written 10th may 2018, before any of the DLC or extra content was out. Some details may be non-canon now. 
> 
> This piece is still kind of rough around the edges, so mind the tags.

Leander and Tani were /present/ in the throne room when Roland returned, the man immediately stumbling to get his bearings as though he'd been thrown from a height and his sudden transportation arrested his momentum. 

"Roland!" Evan screamed without registering anything else around him. He went to him, hands on his arms, his shoulders, to hold the older man up. Although, not so much older now. A few years beyond adolescence, not quite old enough to /have/ a son of Evan's age, if Evan had still been the age he was when they'd first met. 

"Evan... get... Dolor... ahhn..." Roland leaned heavily on Evan's hands, barely able to meet his eyes, bleary and weak. 

Tani, thankfully, had been /actually paying attention/, and was able to send Leander to fetch Doloran at once, while she and Evan, perfectly capable grown adults in their own right, Levitated Roland's recalcitrant body between them towards the nearest guest bedroom before calling for the nurses.

****

Doloran returned with Leander before the nurses even arrived, and the presence of his Other seemed to bring some color back into Roland's exhausted, ashen face. 

"My king," Doloran muttered in anguish, stumbling forward while trying to part himself from his many king's robes. "My brother, what has happened to you?" He placed his hands on Roland's face, and the man sucked in a great heaving breath as though emerging from underwater, but his eyes did not open. 

Evan realized as he watched Doloran run his hands over Roland's form at a few inches removed that he really had no idea what kind of powers the once-too-young-king really possessed, and so he had no idea what Doloran was actually /doing/ as he muttered to himself some more. He stopped to undo Roland's outer coat, then resumed when Evan hastily insisted on doing it himself. 

Under the ministrations of his other self and his devoted king, the color returned to Roland's face, to his extremities when Evan volunteered to rub his feet and hands, and his breathing evened out. He even seemed to wake at one point, but refused to open his eyes. He and Evan exchanged a few brief words beneath Doloran's ever-watchful eye that Evan would not be able to recall later. 

"Toad's bollocks, I bet he needs water or something like that," Tani muttered to herself at one point, returning with a glass Bracken had enchanted to never break, and bustled around at the nearest sink. Doloran silently supported his other's neck as Tani attempted to tip the glass up towards his mouth. Roland coughed violently on most of the few sips they attempted, swallowing little. 

"It's probably a good thing he can cough that loud," Evan pointed out, wondering if he really knew enough about medicine to be making such a statement. Roland's muttered words were ringing in his ears, too sharp, too hoarse. The man sounded nothing like himself. 

Doloran hummed disbelievingly. "It means he has a great way to go before he is healed, and his stamina at this point will determine if he pulls through." 

Tani starts in on an ill-timed inquisition into Doloran's medical experience when the nurses arrive and render the discussion moot. They thank the motley crew for stabilizing the patient, (whatever that means, Evan thinks,) and take up the mantle of bustling about the half-clothed man as the three attendees fade into the background. 

Evan can't bring himself to leave completely, and Leander sends Tani to receive the diplomats in his place, not having the authority to take on the Kings's duties himself being the spouse of a different monarch. Tani returns within a short time frame, probably shorter than that dictated by tradition, and Lofty follows her in his compact, two-legged form, riding on her shoulder. 

Doloran remains in the room, assisting the busy nurses with an expression on his face of one who is steeling himself to do what must be done for the good of the country and its people. 

Evan is literally seconds away from asking about that face of his when Roland heaves a great and tired sigh and opens his eyes and shakes his head. 

"Doloran," he groans, voice still hoarse as though from lack of use, "Evan... Get..." 

"I'm here!" the young king cries, throwing himself out of his seat to Roland's side, Doloran rounding the bed and bending down sagely to peer into Roland's face from the other side. 

"We are both here, my friend. My Other." 

"Roland..." Evan moans, both hands tightening around Roland's one when he feels the man put strength into his grip. 

"My king... I've... returned..." 

"You've been gone so long, Roland! What /happened/ to you!" 

"I..ahh..Ah-haha..." he tries to chuckle self-deprecatingly, but it turns into a heavy, full-throated cough that both Doloran and Evan have to duck away from, Doloran because he was too close to Roland's face, and Evan due to his sensitive ears. "Aahh, sorry. Haven't...M-hmmm...talked much, recently. Been sick." 

"Sick? How so?" Doloran queries, his single-minded focus granting him a clarity of thought that reminds Evan of Leander at his most thinking-ful. 

"Well, uh, cancer." He grins with half his mouth and every trace of sickness, of stress, seems to melt away as he says, "Sorry." 

/Like it's no big deal./ "Cancer?! I'm not even sure I know what that IS, but if it's made you this sick-- Roland... What are we going to do with you?" 

"You might NOT know, Your Majesty," Roland realizes as he speaks, tired haze seeming to clear from his eyes and the glitter of recognition returning to them at last. "I'm not sure it even exists here. That's kind of why I came.... Magic could probably heal me if nothing else could." 

"You /came/? What, on purpose?" 

Roland sighed at that, stress lines appearing again on his forehead and closing his eyes. "Yeah. I got the choice... Right after dying, for a little bit." 

"WHAT!?" The high pitched noise cracks Evan's voice and Roland opens his eyes to smile at his king. He lifts his hand up and Evan catches it immediately. Doloran takes his other hand as well, turning his gaze upon it and making it slightly glow. Small particles begin to accumulate in the glowing aura above their clasped hands and Doloran gets more and more invested in this glow, tuning out the pair of lovebirds as they chat more and more animatedly. 

(He's literally sucking the cancer out. He warns everyone that it's left holes, literal chunks of flesh cut out that will probably scar and need to be healed, but it leaves him a lot /less/ disabled than they were expecting, which makes him resent the precaution taken to keep him bedridden, since he's fucking BEEN bedridden for the past several months, and THAT didn't help him any. The nurses want to know how Doloran did it, of course, but there's no other cases, and no /need/ to write it down for posterity. Roland does the best he can to write down what he experienced, but he was a little distracted at the time, himself, anyway.) 

"It wasn't /exactly/ like dying. Not like the first time, when I first came here. Or any of the times in this world that you saved me from." Evan tries uncomfortably to shrug those off. The magic binding soul to body wears off swiftly, after all, and there was always just a short window of time that a Savior's Tear or something would be able to reconnect them... But if he'd been too far away at any point, they would have lost him forever. That seems to have been the case here. Too far from the magic that could restore his connection to his body, he floated, for lack of a better word. 

At least, that's how Roland describes it. Like he'd been cut loose, set free, like some sort of bird, "And I just felt like, I had a choice. I could go back to that world, that body, that suffering... Or I could go somewhere else. Move on, you know? And... I thought of you, Evan. I just... couldn't leave until I'd seen how you were doing, one last time. I wanted to properly say goodbye. Not that half-assed lame handshake thing we did the first time-" but at that point, he's talking to air, because Evan has shouted his name dramatically and sunk down onto his torso for a heavy hug. 

Doloran is barely disturbed from his task as Roland coughs and wheezes and chuckles through Evan's distraught reaction to his coughing, but afterwards, he looks so much better, healthier, younger, Evan's eyes barely leave his as they talk. He's reminded so viscerally that health is all they have. It's all that stands between anyone and disaster, no matter how safe their daily life might be. 

It's the most important thing, he settles on decisively right then and there, that your loved ones be healthy before they are safe. He and Roland had rarely been /safe/, especially out exploring the untamed world, but they had been able to /meet/ those challenges because of their health, their preparations, their skills. 

"Ahhh, anyway," Roland finishes chuckling to himself, and returns to recounting his story. "I thought I'd end up as just one of those ghosts we'd seen around in the shrines and stuff, that maybe I'd haunt the throne-room and get to chat with Lofty or something when no one else was there - but I showed up with my body and everything! I mean, I'm not sure if it's the old one or the one I had before, here-" 

"Far as I can tell, you look no different to me, than when you left, Daddy." Roland glances sideways at him then, but lets the odd comment slide. 

"So... I'm not exactly inclined to want to go back, this time. I was... Hahhh. I was dying, Evan. Doloran, I'm sure you've noticed that." 

"Hm?" The white-haired man barely looks up from the red glow that's starting to look almost bloated with dull, white particles that he seems to be drawing out of Roland's body. 

"Oh. That's why I feel better," Roland observed, dumbfounded. "That's... the sickness. That right there." 

"Figures," Doloran sighed, looking up finally as he continued to hold the deadly particles in suspension around their grip. "Yes, I noticed, Roland, and I have some grave news to impart about the subject." 

"Go ahead," Roland nodded with lowered brows. 

"You do, as you previously stated, have a choice. Because I began removing the illness from your body, for research purposes, before I knew what it WAS, you now have a great many more them (choices, that is) than you did when you stumbled in here, half dead. Because of the nature of our bond, one of us cannot live if the other dies. So it is within your best interests to keep me alive, and vice versa. This, will end both our lives if I do not take care of it for you." 

"What? How?" 

"Put simply, if it has never been seen in our world, and I do believe the medics will agree with me on this, it should not be allowed out of this room, preferably, not out of its /host/." 

"Oh. I... really don't want it /back/, though..." 

"That is where our bond comes in. I... hesitate to suggest this, of course, knowing how it will affect you, but..." 

"Go on, spit it out!" Evan shouted, ear tips drooping slightly as everyone shushed him for shouting in a sick room. 

"/I/... could go back, in your place, with the sickness in my own body." 

"Wha... What? You'd really, /voluntarily/, I might add, infect yourself with a deadly disease, leave your home and nation, attempt a journey no one has ever made before-!" 

"Well, naow, didn't nobody say no one's ever made the journey, yet, did they?" 

"Lofty?" 

The knobby-headed kingmaker lept onto the headboard, prancing around as he outlined a previous adventure, passed down as a legend among his kind. "More like the adventures of an old relative, really, less of a true legend." 

"So what you're saying is, Lofty, you could send him back, if you wanted?" 

"Right as rain, I could, my son!" 

"Then... why didn't you send me earlier, way back when we first met?" 

"Well, ahh, two reasons for that there, mun. Firstly, I wasn't all proper king-maker-powered-up, like. Me 'n Evan had some right proper bonding to do by yur afore I could even think of tryin' that. 'N second, well, ya never asked, did ya, old boy?" 

Roland seems right flummoxed by this statement, and Evan chimed in to corroborate. 

"That's true, Roland. You never once talked about /wanting/ to go home, though you did talk about what it was like, a little."

"I... suppose you're right. I got so caught up in my life back home, once I returned, I... I really did forget how I acted when I was out here. I never forgot /you/, of course, none of you! But, I guess I forgot, myself." 

"Huh." Leaving the president to his mind-bending realization, Evan lifted his head and prompted Doloran to continue. "Go on, please. What exactly would happen if you went back in his place?" 

Doloran smiled thinly. "This could work out for the best," he prefaced his next statement with. "I can return and take his place, and the invasive disease with me. However, I would retain my power, and all my knowledge, which I am certain will prove sufficient buffer to abate the disease." 

"You think you can beat cancer with magic?" Roland piped up, nonplussed. 

"I believe you said, nothing else has ever worked?" 

Roland hesitated to say 'well, aside from literally poisoning yourself' and instead went with, "Every case is individual, the cells growing out of control, mutating too fast. Magic /could/ work, the same way tiny laser beams /could/ work, but it'd have to be EXTREMELY thorough and well-targeted, whatever spell you used, to avoid more atrophy and cell death of the healthy ones nearby..." 

Doloran nodded along like he was actually following all that. "Extremely well-targeted on a truly minuscule level. I believe I understand the range in question. It would take time, of course, but..." 

"And who's to say magic would even WORK in your world?" Evan piped up again, loathe to send one of his sort-of friends... Compatriots?.... to his doom with too much optimism in his blood. 

"Ah, that there? Don't worry bout that bit. Rather like technology that Broadleaf Inc's got going around about it - it CAN exist in youer world, it just hadn't been invented yet!" 

"Same with magic in his?" 

"Yeup! Least according to the legends of old so-and-so." 

"Well, I'll trust your legends, Lofty. And if Doloran is confident in his abilities, I'd call it cruel to keep both of us here in this realm to die a slow poisonous death that eventually spreads and infects the entire world..." 

"Ack, okay, that's enough!" Evan butted in, none too happy with the mental image that sentence conjured up. 

"So you're ok with this plan too, Evan?" 

Evan shook his head and sighed defeatedly. "As long as he knows what he's walking into, and as long as he gets there in one piece, I'm not going to order Doloran to avoid danger. I'm just going to implore him to be careful..." Evan's eyes flicked down to Roland and winced. "And just... be willing to take a less-than-subtle way out, will you? If it seems the cancer is winning?" 

"I relish the opportunity as a scientist to study the phenomenon, and I will be discrete in my attempts to cure it so as not to upset the natural order of things in your world. I understand I would have to slowly recover over time, not in one night, although that very well may be within my abilities..." 

After more musing on the subject, Doloran agreed to use his magic to stage his own death and throw off the mantle of slowly-recovering-from-cancer, if he was unable to perform the duties of the President while simultaneously under such magical duress. It was only once Lofty had half-completed the magic circle that anyone remembered to think to ask what the President's duties actually /were/. 

Roland, by this time completely and magically healed, but mentally exhausted from the experience of snapping back to full health in under 30 minutes after being deathly ill for so many months, could only do so much as wince. 

"Ask for explanations of everything? Plead memory fatigue if something sounds too complicated. And always ask yourself, what would Evan do?" 

"Aww," Tani squealed under her breath, elbowing Evan in the ribs as they stood shoulder to shoulder before Doloran, Lofty, and Roland, who was only barely standing by leaning heavily on the bed's footboard. Evan jostled her right back, unable to keep the spreading smile off his face.


End file.
